French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky has the most feminine sound to his voice of active countertenors today, followed closely by Iestyn Davies. On last year's recording of Vivaldi's La fida ninfa, Jaroussky's tone struck my ears as "pretty if a little breathy," and in spite of really enjoying his new disc -- a lovely selection of arias from operas by Johann Christian Bach -- I cannot help but wonder how his voice would carry in live performance without close miking. Jaroussky first made it onto my radar screen through media attention in 2008, and his fame continues to increase in the press -- see the profile on him by Bertrand Dermoncourt in L'Express and another one more recently in the Sydney Morning Herald. He has certainly been part of recent marketing trends in classical music, moving product with the help of attractive pictures of star musicians. Jaroussky's good looks are happily not the only reason he has found success, so good for him.
J. Chr. Bach, Johann Sebastian's globe-trotting son who worked in Italy, Paris, and most famously London, is a vastly underrated composer, both for his instrumental works and especially for his operas, which are just now becoming known again (Christophe Rousset mounted Temistocle a few years ago). Jaroussky claims a long-held admiration for Bach and certainly makes a case for reviving the composer's operas, late examples of a dying genre, opera seria, when they were written. He sings these excerpts, written both during Bach's time in Italy and in London, with an admirable sense of melodic line and an always beautiful tone and daring embellishments, if not always clear and idiomatic Italian. Jérémie Rhorer keeps his period instrument group, Le Cercle de l'Harmonie, on the controlled and soft side, to accommodate the size of Jaroussky's voice, with fortepiano appropriately replacing the harpsichord in the two concert arias that are included. Recommended both for musical beauty and the interest of hearing this neglected composer's works.
Edvard Munch, The Seine by Saint-Cloud (1890, Munch-Museet, Oslo)
The Scandinavian expressionism of Edvard Munch has not appealed much to viewers in France. There are not many of his works hung in museums there: the Musée d'Orsay has had one exhibit devoted to him, in 1991. A little show at the Pinacothèque de Paris, on the Place de la Madeleine, has proven wrong the assumption that the French do not like Munch, with its small exhibition rooms filled with people. The exhibit has some paintings, but not the famous ones from Oslo (the show's subtitle is "The Anti-Scream"), but it is the drawings that fascinated Philippe Dagen recently, as he wrote in his review (Edvard Munch, merveilleux dessinateur, April 4) for Le Monde (my translation and links added):
The principal merit of the show is found in the considerable number -- more than a hundred -- of drawings and lithographs. On paper or stone, Munch never hesitates. He finds images with ferocious efficacy. He invents allegories of concupiscence, betrayal, or jealousy that have the force of reality. Faces and bodies are reduced to signs rendered even more penetrating by the opposition of white and black. Dry point, wood engraving, and lithography are of equal appeal to him. The Sick Child, Madonna, The Lonely Ones, Vampire, and Attraction are violent proof of that.
One room is devoted to the 22 pages of a sort of fable in images drawn by Munch in 1908-1909, Alpha and Omega. One looks at them without really understanding the meaning of the story, assuming that there even is one. It is more just a series of obsessive and impossible images, sometimes slapstick, sometimes tragic. They alone make a visit worthwhile.
Edvard Munch ou l'Anti-Cri -- the subtitle also makes an interesting pun with the word Antichrist -- remains open through July 18. Many of the works are on loan from private collections and therefore very much worth seeing.
Translation of the video: The furtive steps of visitors in the shadow of the work of Edvard Munch, 170 paintings. Nothing official: these are works owned by private collectors. Munch produced 4,000 paintings and lithographs, and he refused to sell them. The exhibit at the Pinacothèque [de Paris] reveals a little-known side of the most famous Norwegian painter.
Visitor: "This crying nude is really magnificent. One feels the emotions that he was able, that he wanted to express. I really like this exhibit."
Munch ou L'Anti-Cri, people are coming from Norway to see this exhibit of paintings that are rarely shown in public, but visitors will not see the most emblematic painting, The Scream. The point made by the exhibit is that Munch's work cannot be summed up by The Scream.
Marc Restellini, director of the Pinacothèque de Paris: "There is a certain amount of anguish in his work, it was a big part of his life. But that was also fairly short, and in fact it stops in his work around the year 1900. At that point, he became serene, the anguish disappears, he finally managed to replace his neuroses with other things. We see him develop a style of painting that is extremely calm and serene, filled with color."
This sweetness is found in his landscapes of the Norwegian countryside and in family scenes. Three years before The Scream, Munch was in Paris. He painted a view of the Seine at Saint-Cloud in 1890 [painting shown above]. The Pinacothèque de Paris truly invites us to see the destiny of a life, which is exactly the title of this work in colored pencil.
First impressions can be terrible things. The emotional footprint they have is so formative that it colors our perception of everything that comes after. That’s why a first date to which you showed up with a booger blissfully stuck to the tip of your nose so rarely leads to a second. Or why every BeethovenSymphony since Toscanini has been a disappointment. (Part of the ‘Golden Age’ attitude found with frightful frequency among critics of a certain age.)
When your first meaningful encounter with the Shostakovich string quartets was the Borodin Quartet, you are screwed, too. The intensity, the roughness, and the overwhelming sense of authenticity (ultimately a purely psychological phenomenon), there simply isn’t anything that can match that. My impression by the Borodin has been so considerable that I even, perversely, consider scratchy sound and slight distortion part of the desirable ‘authenticity’. Perhaps it helps getting into the dark, dystopian Soviet mood that facilitates our appreciation of these quartets? It’s nonsense, of course—but try arguing with perception and feelings, even—or especially—if they are your own.
In any case, there are other quartets that have shown me that the Borodin-only diet is limiting. Most remarkably the Jerusalem Quartet, which live and on record delivers some of the most awe-some, most gripping Shostakovich around. Another revelation, more subtle though it has been, are the audiophile recordings of the Mandelring Quartet on Audite SACDs. The sheer beauty of all of Shostakovich’s brilliantly harrowing ugliness that these discs—I’m now listening to their cycle’s concluding, fifth volume, delivered in unrivaled dynamics—is something to behold.
It might be special even in lesser performances than those the German sibling-based Mandelring Quartet (named after the street they grew up on) claw and pull form the scores of the 11th, 13th and 15th quartets. Key to that enjoyment—and really to the enjoyment of any DSCH or Bartók quartet listened to on inevitably limiting recording media—is that you listen loud. Very loud. If your neighbors aren’t ‘enjoying’ your Shostakovich session, neither will you.
The quartets of Shostakovich won’t need praise or introduction in these pages—either you admire or love them or you have not heard them live yet. But it helps to appreciate different interpretations to know specifically what distinguishes the three quartets on this volume. For one, they represent an internalization of emotion that takes place in all, but especially the late, of Shostakovich’s quartets. Anger and anguish are there, but suppressed; suffering and sighs are accentuated. Unlike in some of the symphonies (nos. 10, 11), resignation and resentment are approached with apprehension rather than gusto. Nor is scathing irony (Symphony no.15) present. That’s what we get in these three quartets: quiet suffering and moments of queer humor to the point where I imagine that performers in the USSR must have been scared upon first playing and discovering them.
One exception to the seething-calm of these three quartets is the harrowingly sudden, jagged opening of the Recitative of the 11th quartet is ripped into with such joyous ferocity by the Borodin Quartet that it seems difficult to top. The Sorrel Quartet, whose fine Chandos recordings were on hand for convenient comparison, certainly, literally seems only to scratch the surface instead. The Mandelring, parts of whose interpretation on volume three I found a bit “nice sounding”, won’t be outdone this time. Their slash is yet even more explosive; even as their tone remains, as always, more refined. (The Jerusalem, incidentally, sound much like the Borodin here; except in Harmonia Mundi’s fine, less direct than Audite’s, sound.) The Scherzo from the same quartet, experiences the swiftest clip at the hand of the Jerusalems (2:42), who needle through it like a sewing machine. Compared to them, the Sorrel (taking 3:17) drag their feet. The Borodins, perhaps uniquely in the Shostakovich cycle, offer a movement I don’t consider superior but rather a little wimpy.
In Fanfare Magazine, Art Lange writes about the fourth volume that the “Mandelring Quartet faithfully reveals the letter, but not always the spirit of the score. Their playing is… blemish free; they are scrupulously in their attention to details like [tempo changes]… and they present a coherent, unified point of view throughout…” The problem with this polite damnation is that, really, all quartets make that impression, when compared to the Borodin. The Mandelring’s carefully considered, always unpredictable ways are a treasure—here and in the other installments. Their performances are polished and meticulous, even immaculate, but that unpredictability keeps them from being relegating to the ‘mild-mannered’ cycles. The dynamic range and fidelity of the Audite recordings, hence the suggestion to turn up the volume, does its part to lift it above much of the competition.
Specifically, I prefer this cycle over the Sorrel, St.Petersburg, Danel, and Brodsky Quartets. The Fitzwilliam cycle, to which I am not emotionally wedded, hasn’t anything the Borodin doesn’t offer me—minus presumed Russianness. The Emerson’s rigid live recordings I’ve never much liked, and I’ve heard nothing or too little of the various Manhattan, Rubio, and Éder cycles to judge. Direct comparison, in any case, is rather tedious when dealing with great music in interpretations that are all above average (because one just wants to keep listening), puts the Mandelring Quartet’s cycle, and certainly volume five, up with the best of the ‘non-Russian’ Shostakovich interpretations. If I were to shed all but two cycles (and of course I can’t), I would keep the complete Borodin cycle on Melodiya and the Mandelring Quartet to cover my bases.
Friday evening, National Symphony Orchestra Principal Conductor Iván Fischer led the orchestra and University of Maryland Concert Choir in an enthralling performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor. The NSO’s latest foray into the once specialist-only realm of historically informed performance practice (HIP) -- last spring it was the UMD Concert Choir with Helmuth Rilling leading Haydn’s Creation -- showed that a mainstream American orchestra can perform early music with fashionable musicological ideas that can connect with both the audience’s intellect and soul.
The NSO was a vibratoless baroque band, few in numbers, spinning out shapes like a top in tandem with an exquisitely blended chorus of about forty-five singers that included sopranos who could easily ascend to the top of their range without increasing in volume. Credit goes to Fischer for experimenting with the alternative placement of musicians: the winds took the entire front row around the podium, while the chorus was split into five separated sections forming a “U” around the orchestra, seemingly to aid coordination between the sections. One drawback was that the second violins were on the opposite side of the stage from the firsts, leading to a slight delay when both sections were playing unison material. Regardless, this was a generation away from the norm of a symphonic chorus of hundreds being prodded along by a lethargic orchestra of similar proportion, heavily attempting to make Brahms out of Bach.
Fischer perhaps overly personalized the opening statements of the Kyrie, yet once a solid tempo was established in the next section, the work came to life. It is fair to say that one wondered at times if Fischer’s brisk tempos were chosen to make a point to those that say symphonic musicians cannot hack this approach to performance practice (in this case all were highly polished except for the bumbling trumpets, even with the modern help of valves!), whether to keep the program within certain time limits (the Et incarnatus est section of the Credo was skipped!), or if that is simply what he preferred. Impressively, Fischer gave nearly full attention to the chorus and soloists, always demanding more when one perceived he was finally satisfied with previous demands. Fischer reached a high point when bringing the lamenting Crucifixus passacaglia down to a haunting hush; a low point at the Pleni sunt coeli fugue of the Sanctus, which lacked dignity due to its irreverent (fast) pace.
Soprano Dominique Labelle, contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, and tenor Michael Slattery all shined in their abilities to match reediness with resonance, whereas baritone Thomas E. Bauer seemed to have to dig to find low notes, which is not surprising since he was singing bass arias. Unfortunately, Lemieux often extended and accented “s’s,” perhaps causing colossal amplification failure. Under Fischer’s hand -- he conducted sans baton -- the NSO is giving the Washington National Cathedral Choirs and Baroque Pickup Orchestra some competition for the most exceptional early music in town.
The National Symphony Orchestra does not have another classical program scheduled until the end of the month, when guest conductor Hans Graf leads an all-French program with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet (April 29 to May 1). For your orchestral fix this coming week, Hannu Lintu will lead the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in an intriguing program of Beethoven, Sibelius, and Rautavaara (April 8 and 9 in Baltimore, April 10 at Strathmore).
Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.
Thanks to a member of La Cieca's commentariat, the most colorful bunch of snarky readers on the Internet, for drawing my attention to this exquisitely bad soprano, who will provide your Easter entertainment with her unforgettable rendition of Sempre libera. The hilarious subtitles, added by the YouTube poster, make this video. [YouTube]
One of the things that actor Alfred Molina did to prepare for the New York run of Red, in which he plays painter Mark Rothko, was to come to Washington last week to see the Rothko Room at the Phillips Collection and the Rothkos in the tower at the National Gallery of Art. [New York Times]
The real problem with canceling the revival of Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles at the Met, besides being cowardly? Leonard Slatkin did not really know the score of what replaced it, La Traviata. Disaster ensues. [Parterre Box]
Anne Midgette ponders the role of encores, and whether a reviewer should write about them. [The Classical Beat]
Mark Berry reports that the Jerusalem Quartet faced another angry protest at one of its performances this week, this time at Wigmore Hall. Long-time readers may recall that there was a related incident a couple years ago, here at the Library of Congress, again apparently related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [Boulezian]
Hahaha. Every cartoon in The New Yorker can work with the caption "Christ, what an asshole." [Boing Boing]
Criticism is dead, or maybe it isn't. Film critic A. O. Scott has the good news and the bad news. As one of the "nattering gaggle of bloggers," it is good to know that I am only the latest in the ongoing murder of criticism. [New York Times]
The final installment of this year's artistic meditations for the Triduum (see Holy Thursday and Good Friday) comes from an unlikely source, the installation of Mark Rothko's late black-on-black paintings in the tower room of the National Gallery of Art's East Building. Well, perhaps not so unlikely -- Rothko had just finished these seven paintings when he received the commission from John and Dominique de Menil to decorate a Catholic chapel in Houston. As a result, he made larger versions of the same idea to be installed in the octagonal room (the original architectural design by Philip Johnson was completed by Howard Barnstone and Eugene Aubry) now known as the Rothko Chapel. The artist attributed his inspiration for the black theme -- darkness as light -- to the window of blackness in a late Matisse painting, Porte-fenêtre à Collioure (1914, now in the collection of the Centre Pompidou).
The truth is that, when you look at these paintings up close (for those unable to make it to the museum, there is an online slideshow), they are more complex than the term black-on-black describes. They are right in line with most of Rothko's abstract work, in that a black (in one case, brown) rectangle hovers over backgrounds of slightly different colors and, also like many other Rothkos, even more colors are masked underneath the uppermost layer of paint. In many cases, those lighter hues glow around the edge of the central rectangle, like a halo or the corona of sunlight at the edge of an eclipse. Spending some time sitting in the trapezoidal room at the top of the East Building made me recall that the focus of the Tenebrae service is, after all, darkness: the darkness into which Christ cast himself, offering himself up for a ruination to be compared with that of Jerusalem razed by its attackers.
The symbolism often seen in the Tenebrae service is that candles (and other lights) are gradually extinguished, until the final candle is carried from the room, leaving utter darkness. The sense of entering an otherworldly space is heightened in this exhibit because the museum, quite brilliantly, is showing the Rothko paintings while playing a recording of Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel, the piece commissioned for the 1971 opening of the Rothko Chapel. (The recording is a recently re-released one from the New Albion label, linked above, paired with Feldman's Why Patterns?.) It is one of Feldman's more tonal, and therefore more easily accessible, works, and it plays off the Catholic setting of the chapel in its use of antiphonal choirs, forming clusters of notes or trading wordless motifs, with a viola's solo lines and touches of celesta and percussion filling the gaps. (For a thoughtful appreciation of Feldman's absorption of influences from the New York abstract painters, see this article by Alex Ross. You can also listen to the whole thing online.) The whole experience suits the Holy Saturday conclusion to the Triduum, where even in the selections from the Lamentations assigned to the day, there is a glimmer of light in the agonized darkness: "The Lord is my portion, said my soul, because of that I shall wait for him" (from Lamentations 3: 22-29).
In the Tower: Mark Rothko will be on view at the National Gallery of Art through January 2, 2011.
Francisco de Zurbarán, Saint Luke Contemplating the Crucifixion (1630s, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid)
A remarkable exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, The Sacred Made Real: Spanish Painting and Sculpture, 1600–1700, is perfectly timed for a Holy Week reflection that follows nicely after yesterday's post on the Lamentations. The art on display shows how Baroque artists in Spain responded to the ideals of the Catholic Reformation. This attitude can be traced back to the teachings of the Jesuits and the preaching of Filippo Neri in the Oratory in Rome: an attempt to reconnect everyday people to the stories of the Bible through simple means, just as Neri reached out to the poor communities of Rome. Caravaggio's plain-Jane, barefooted Madonna of Loreto and her baby come to life before the simple peasants who kneel in devotion at her feet. Catholic mysticism became less esoteric and more direct.
The Spanish types of sculpture in this show were created with unusual techniques to make them as life-like as possible. Juan Martínez Montañés (1568-1649) made glass tears that shimmer on the cheeks of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order -- Gregorio Fernández used glass to make the eyes of his Ecce homo figure shine (the figure seems closely modeled on Michelangelo's Cristo della Minerva, and not only because it was originally completely nude) -- and followers of Pedro de Mena (1628-1688) used bits of horn for the fingernails of the penitent Magdalen. Mena himself left a permanently glistening wetness in the trails of blood on his Ecce homo, as if the wounds are fresh and the blood still actually flowing. (While the sculptures were made of realistically painted wood, the clothing is often real clothing, glued in place and painted.) Francisco Ribalta (1565-1628) has his Christ reach from the cross to return the embrace of Bernard of Clairvaux who is lost in meditation before the crucifix.
Francisco de Zurbarán, St. Francis in Ecstasy (c. 1640, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
The mixture of art and reality is a common theme, for example, in Francisco de Zurbarán's St. Luke contemplating his own depiction of the crucifixion (shown above): palette in hand, the first Christian painter (whose works are by tradition the models of the oldest images of Jesus and Mary) looks with the eye of both the artist and the believer. His crucifixion is not yet finished -- there is no spear wound in the side, as if the events of Good Friday have not yet been completed -- and it seems to draw the artist into the story, experiencing it as it happens, even causing the wounds by painting them. Another famous Zurbarán -- the best pieces in the show are those by him and by Diego Velázquez (especially a stunning, surreal, nightscape Immaculate Conception) -- shows St. Francis in a moment of ecstasy, posed as if he is already a life-like statue in a niche. Not all of these works -- not even all of the crucifixion scenes -- emphasize the gory aspect of their subject matter: there is only a hint of the stigmatic wounds Francis received, on the hands partially hidden under his sleeves and the spear wound in his side making a slight stain on his habit.
This small but exquisite show will be open through May 31, but be warned that if you visit during the Triduum, as I did, you may be tempted to reach out to reverence these depictions of the crucifixion with the words, "¡Dulces clavos! ¡Dulce árbol donde la vida empieza!" If you cannot get there in person, the next best thing is this slideshow of many of the artworks. The soundtrack behind it is a recording of Stephen Hough's Requiem aeternam, based on Victoria's setting of the Requiem Mass. You can hear it performed live this Easter Sunday afternoon (April 4, 6:30 pm) in a free concert at the National Gallery of Art (unusually, on the concourse of the East Building).
With April Fools' Day falling in this most solemn week this year, I am not inclined toward any joke posts today. For those looking for a good joke, we direct you to last year's whoppingpoisson d'avril. In other news, Evan Tucker's Washington Complaints Choir project, sent to the carefully dubious editors at DCist on today of all days, was judged a hoax by yours truly, but it provides some good laughs so have a look. [SVILUPPO: It has been brought to my attention that the Washington Complaints Choir is not a hoax: they just happened to send their press release on April Fools' Day.]
Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1844–1930), Cry of the Prophet Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Last night, a large congregation filled the beautiful church of the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land, a site in northeast Washington well worth a visit, for a Tenebrae service. The format of the liturgy, a sort of combination of Matins and Lauds for Holy Week, is based on a reconstruction attributed to Rev. Winthrop Brainerd, the former pastor of the Church of the Epiphany in Georgetown. The music, performed and led by the Suspicious Cheese Lords, the all-male vocal ensemble based here in Washington, was a combination of simple English chant, intoned on a single reciting note, and a handful of polyphonic selections. These ranged from Arvo Pärt's De profundis, a meditative setting of Psalm 129 (130) with exotic percussion ("Holy Minimalism, Batman!"), to William Byrd's gorgeous Ne irascaris Domine, an unusual setting of a text taken directly by Byrd from Isaiah 64, not from a chant text.
In this work, Byrd uses a musical image to suggest the desolation of Jerusalem in the secunda pars, a stringent homophony that sounds a lot like the English-language anthems he wrote for the Anglican church: it stands out like a sore thumb in the midst of the more complex imitative (read Catholic) polyphony of the rest of the work. Here, the image of the ruins of Jerusalem suggests the loss of the Catholic Latin rite in England. The reference to the loss of the civitas sancti tui relates the work to the most beautiful piece in the service, a selection from Antoine Brumel's setting of the Lamentations, Cogitavit dominus, proper to Good Friday. The piece ends with the interpolated refrain to the Lamentations lessons, adapted from Hosea 14, translated in the title of this post. The service also ended with a strepitus, the loud noise that is meant to symbolize the convulsion of the earth at the death of Jesus, that was the most percussive cacophony of noise ever witnessed at one of these services.
Thomas Tallis, Lamentations I (Holy Thursday, Matins, Lesson 1)
The Lamentations of Jeremiah are the forgotten texts of the Triduum, the three days at the end of Holy Week during which the Catholic Church commemorates the establishment of the Mass, the suffering and death of Jesus, and his rising from the dead. They are largely forgotten by modern Catholics because of the near-total disappearance of the celebration of the Divine Office: substantial sections of the Latin translation of the Old Testament book were featured as lessons in the night office of Matins on the three days of the Triduum in the medieval liturgy (along with excerpts from Augustine's commentary on the Psalms and some of Paul's epistles). In this way, the Church compared the torture and execution of Jesus to the devastation of Jerusalem described by Jeremiah (referenced by Dante to describe his sorrow at the death of Beatrice): how could God possibly allow "the city of perfect beauty, the joy of all the earth" -- or his own son -- to be so utterly destroyed and devastated? These services were done away with by the reforms to the Holy Week liturgies by Pope Pius XII in the mid-20th century, but in some churches they are subsumed in a Tenebrae service, celebrated on Wednesday of Holy Week, as parallel services are often scheduled in Protestant churches.
Thomas Tallis, Lamentations II (Holy Thursday, Matins, Lesson 1)
The Lamentations are a highly stylized set of poems, four of which are abecedarian in structure, meaning that the initial letters of the 22 verses are in alphabetical sequence. In the Latin translation used by the Catholic Church, the Hebrew letters starting each verse were preserved in transliterated form (aleph, beth, etc.). These exotic words intrigued composers who set the Lamentations to music, first as chant and later in polyphony, inspiring lengthy melismas and unusual chromatic colors. The form of the Lamentations in the Liber usualis is, like much of its content, a modern homogenization of medieval chants that were much more ornate -- see, for example, my paper "Text and Music for the Lamentations: A Comparison of Settings in Cambrai XVI and Graz 29," in Medieval Perspectives 10 (1995): 86–100. The infinite number of later polyphonic settings of the Lamentations, like those of Tallis and Brumel in the Renaissance and of Carissimi, Frescobaldi, and others in the Baroque, only became more ornate. The videos embedded in this post can provide a very effective Holy Week (or just purely musical) meditation.
Thomas Tallis, Lamentations II, cont. (Holy Thursday, Matins, Lesson 1)
DSCH, String Quartets v.5, 
